Opening Statement to the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development

Managing the Safety and Accessibility of Pesticides
(Chapter 1 - 2003 Report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development)

23 October 2003

Johanne Gélinas,
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to appear again before this Committee. I am here today to present our findings on Managing the Safety and Accessibility of Pesticides. With me this afternoon are my key management staff responsible for this audit: Neil Maxwell, Principal and Peter Morrison, Director.

I would like to begin by recapping our key findings and concerns and then discuss how the government should go about addressing them, and the important role your Committee could play.

We examined this issue because pesticides play an important part in our lives today. They help produce and preserve the food we eat. Canadians use them in forests, in gardens and on lawns, to control parasites on pets, and to combat the spread of diseases such as West Nile virus. But there are risks—ones that, Mr. Chairman, your Committee explored extensively in its report of 2000. Given the importance of pesticides and given the risks, the federal government must strive for consistent excellence in evaluating pesticides and ensuring compliance with regulations governing their use.

Our audit was far ranging. Much of it focussed on the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA), a branch of Health Canada. We covered the evaluation of new pesticides against current standards, the re-evaluation of older ones, the timeliness of access to new pesticides, and activities to ensure compliance with legislation and label requirements. But we ranged further, examining other branches of Health Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and Natural Resources Canada. Each has an important role in understanding the impacts of pesticides, through their research and monitoring.

We found that the PMRA has made some significant improvements since its creation. However in all of the areas we examined, we found weaknesses too numerous to describe in these opening remarks. As a reference tool and a quick overview of our chief concerns, we have provided you with an expanded version of the audit chapter's table of contents. If you turn to the table of contents, you will see some of our key concerns.

Overall, I concluded that these numerous weaknesses raise serious questions about the management of the risks to health and the environment associated with pesticides.

The most serious concern in my report is the slowness of progress in re-evaluating older pesticides. Some of these pesticides were first registered decades ago, when standards were less stringent and less was known about the effects of pesticides. There are 405 pesticides contained in thousands of commercial products that the PMRA pledged to re-evaluate by 2006. The government has been working on some of these re-evaluations for more than 10 years. All of those pesticides that have been fully re-evaluated have either been removed from the market or had restrictions placed on their use. For example, the re-evaluation of DEET, the widely used insect repellent, began in 1990 but was not completed until 2002, after which its use was substantially restricted.

One example illustrates why the slow progress on re-evaluations is a concern. The PMRA had made a commitment to re-evaluate eight widely used lawn pesticides by 2001. Last March, when the field work for my audit of federal pesticide management was completed, five of those eight re-evaluations were still underway. As a result, decision makers at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels do not have the information they need to make good decisions about managing these pesticides. Nor do individual homeowners know what the risks are with the pesticides they are applying to their lawns.

We reached the troubling conclusion that some pesticides available on the market likely do not meet current standards for protecting human health and the environment. The risks associated with pesticide use can never be reduced to zero, but the Agency has a responsibility to ensure that the pesticides Canadians use do meet current standards.

This is a long-standing problem, with many promises made along the way. Fifteen years ago, in 1988, we recommended that the government "complete its re-evaluations as quickly as possible … on the basis of highest risk." The department responsible at the time, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, responded, "(We) agree that currently registered pesticides be re-evaluated on the basis of highest risk. A systematic process has already been established to determine re-evaluation priorities on the basis of risk-ranking and volume of use." Commitments to action were made in 1988, in 1994, and, in response to this Committee's report, in 2000. Why is it that, 15 years later, so much work remains in an area where health and the environment are at risk? We noted other examples of inaction on past audit findings.

This, Mr. Chairman, is the past, but I would like to focus on the future. In my view, things need to change. With the new Act and new resources come new expectations for the federal government. In this new environment, the PMRA, Health Canada, and the other departments now have an opportunity to act decisively to correct the many weaknesses highlighted in our report. They need to seize that opportunity. We have set out some of the key areas where improvements are needed, and I would be pleased to provide the Committee with more details.

I must say, however, that the responses to my recommendations by PMRA, Health Canada, and others gave little indication that they intend to act decisively. For example, Health Canada accepted our recommendation to strengthen pesticide evaluations but then said no further strengthening was required. Are they prepared to clearly commit to addressing each weakness we identified, with particular attention to the key issues such as re-evaluations? Will they put in place detailed action plans to resolve the weaknesses and to respond to our recommendations—action plans with concrete measures and demanding deadlines?

Mr. Chairman, by asking questions like these, your Committee could help ensure that the PMRA and the other departments do resolve these problems decisively. The Committee could also be invaluable in the future by monitoring progress on this action plan, including follow-up on our recommendations. The Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food has done something similar, by holding regular hearings where the PMRA provides an update on how it is improving access to pesticides for farmers. Assessing progress at regular intervals on pesticide re-evaluation would be particularly important, and could be based on the new annual re-evaluation progress report that the PMRA has committed to develop.

Thank you for your attention. We would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.